The Aquitaine Progression (65 page)

“
Werner! Wo sind Sie?
”

The shouts preceded the figure of Leifhelm’s chauffeur. He appeared at the far end of the second mound, moving slowly, his gun raised, each step taken cautiously, his head shifting in all directions, a soldier experienced in combat patrol. Converse thought how much better off the world would be if he were an expert shot. He was not. In pilot training he had gone through the obligatory small-arms course, and at twenty-five feet had rarely hit the target. This second soldier of Aquitaine had to be sucked in much closer.

“
Werner! Antworten Sie doch!
”

Silence.

The chauffeur was alarmed; he walked backward, now crouching, scanning the hill of refuse, kicking away any object in his backward path, his head pivoting. Joel knew what he had to do; he had done it before. Divert the killer’s attention, pulling him closer to the encounter, then move away.

“
Auughh …!
” Converse let the wail come out of his throat. Then added in clear English, “Oh, my
God
!” Instantly he crawled to the far end of the wall of railroad ties. He peered around the side, his head in shadows.

“
Werner! Wo sind—!
” The German stood erect, his eyes following his line of hearing. Suddenly he broke into a run, his weapon thrust in front of him—a man cornering a hated object, the sound of English leading him to the loathed enemy.

The chauffeur threw himself prone across the railroad ties, his expression alert, his gun in front of him. He fired into the shadowed corpse below, a roar of vengeance accompanying the explosions.

Joel got to his knees, aimed his automatic, and pulled the trigger twice. The German spun off the ties, blood erupting in his chest.

“Some win,” whispered Converse rising to his feet, remembering the man on the train to Emmerich.

He was down in the marshlands, the clothes in his arms. He had scrambled across the railroad tracks, down through the wild grass into the swampy dampness of the marsh. It was water, and that was all he had to know. Water was a benefit, whether as an escape route or as a purifying agent for a wracked body—also lessons he had learned years ago. He sat naked on a sloping marsh bank, taking off his inhibiting money belt, wondering if the paper bills inside were soaked but not caring enough to examine them.

He did, however, examine every pocket of the clothes he had stripped from his would-be executioners. He was not sure what was of value and what was not. The money was irrelevant, except for the small bills; and the driver’s licenses had photographs embedded in plastic—neither was worth the risk of scrutiny. There was an ominous-looking knife, the long blade released through the head by the touch of a button on the handle; he kept it. Also a cheap butane lighter and a comb—and, for the drinking man, two breath fresheners. The rest were personal effects—keys, a four-leaf-clover good-luck
charm, photographs in the wallets—he did not care to look at them. Death was death, enemy and friend fundamentally equalized. The only things he was interested in were the clothes.
They
were the option, the option he had used in the jungle a lifetime ago. He had crammed himself inside a scout’s tattered uniform, and twice across a narrow riverbank he had not been shot by the enemy who had spotted him. Instead, they had waved.

He selected the articles of clothing that fit best and put them on; the rest he threw into the marsh. Whatever he looked like, there was little or no resemblance to the tweedy academic he had tried to be in Bonn. If anything, he could be mistaken for a man who worked on the Rhine, a roughhewn mate or a foreman of a barge crew. He had chosen the chauffeur’s coat, a dark, coarse-woven jacket cut to the hips, with the man’s blue denim shirt underneath—both bullet holes washed clean of blood. The trousers were those of the subordinate executioner; brown creaseless corduroys, flared slightly at the ankles, which, thankfully, they reached. Neither man had worn a hat, and his was somewhere in the landfill; he would find one or buy one or steal one. He had to; without a hat or a cap covering part of his face, he felt as naked, as exposed and as frightened as he would have felt without clothes.

He lay back in the dry wild grass as the sun disappeared over an unseen horizon and stared up at the sky.

“Well,
Ahh’l be
…!” exclaimed the distinguished-looking man with the flowing mane of white hair, his full, nearly white eyebrows arched in astonishment. “You’re Molly Washburn’s boy?”

“I beg your pardon?” said the Army officer at the adjacent table along the banquette in Bonn’s Am Tulpenfeld restaurant. “Have we met, sir?”

“Not so’s you’d remember, Major.… Please forgive my intruding.” The Southerner addressed the apology to the officer’s
companion across the table, a balding middle-aged man who had been speaking English with a pronounced German accent. “But Molly would never forgive this pore old Georgia cracker if he didn’t say hello to her son and insist on buyin’ him a drink.”

“I’m afraid I’m at a loss,” said Washburn pleasantly but without enthusiasm.

“I would be, too, young fella. I know it sounds cornpone, but you were just barely in long pants back then. The last time I saw you, you were in a blue blazer jacket and madder ’n hell at losing a soccer game. I think you blamed it on your left wing, which in my opinion then and now is a logical place to blame
anything
.”

The major and his companion laughed appreciatively. “Good Lord, that does go back a long time—to when I was at Dalton.”

“And captain of the team, as I recall.”

“How did you ever recognize me?”

“I dropped in on your momma the other week at the house in Southampton. Proud girl that she is, there were a few real handsome photographs of you in the living room.”

“Of course, on the piano.”

“That’s where they were, silver frames and all.”

“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Thayer. Thomas Thayer, or just plain old T.T. as your momma calls me.” The two shook hands.

“Good to see you again, sir,” said Washburn, gesturing at his companion. “This is Herr Stammler. He handles a great deal of our press relations with the West German media.”

“How do you do, Mr. Stammler.”

“A pleasure, Herr Thayer.”

“Speakin’ of the embassy and I assume you were, I promised Molly I’d ring you up over there when I got here. Mah word on it, I was goin’ to do just that tomorrow—I’m fightin’ jet lag today. One hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? You bein’ here and my bein’ here, right
next
to each other!”

“Major,” interrupted the German courteously. “Two people who go back so many years must have a great deal to reminisce about. And since our business is fundamentally concluded, I think I shall press on.”

“Now, hold on, Mr. Stammler,” objected Thayer. “Ah simply couldn’t allow you to do that!”

“No, really, it’s perfectly all right.” The German smiled.
“Truthfully, Major Washburn felt he should insist on taking me to dinner this evening after the terrible things we’ve had to deal with during the past few days—he far more than I—but to be quite honest, I’m exhausted. Also I am far older than my young friend and nowhere near as resilient. The bed cries out, Herr Thayer. Believe me when I tell you that.”

“Hey, Mr. Stammler, Ah’ve got an idea. You’re fanned out and I’m droppin’ from the jet stream, so why don’t we leave the young skunk here and
both
hit the pillows?”

“But
I
couldn’t allow
you
to do that.” The German got up from the table and extended his hand to Thayer. They shook, and Stammler turned to Washburn, shaking his hand also. “I’ll call you in the morning, Norman.”

“All right, Gerhard.… Why didn’t you just say you were tired?”

“And conceivably offend one of my largest clients? Be reasonable, Norman. Good night, gentlemen.” The German smiled again, and walked away.

“Ah guess we’re stuck with each other, young man,” said the Southerner. “Why not move over here and let me save the embassy a couple of dollars?”

“All right,” replied Washburn, getting up with his drink and sidling between the tables to the chair opposite Thayer. He sat down. “How is Mother? I haven’t called her in a couple of weeks.”

“Molly is always Molly, my boy. She came forth and they broke the mold, but I don’t have to tell
you
that. She looks the same as she did twenty years ago. I swear I don’t know how she
does
it!”

“And she’s not going to tell you, either.”

Both men laughed as the Southerner raised his glass and brought it forward for the touch. The glasses met, a gentle ring was heard. It was the beginning.

Converse waited, watching from a dark storefront on the shabby street in Emmerich. Across the way were the dim lights of a cheap hotel, the entrance uninviting, sleazy. Yet with any luck he would have a bed there in the next few minutes. A bed with a sink in the corner of the room and, with even more luck, hot water with which he could bathe his wound and change the bandage again. During the last two nights he had learned that such places were his only possibilities for refuge. No questions would be asked and a false name
on a registration card expected. But even the most sullen greeting was a menace for him. He had only to open his mouth and whatever came out identified him as an American who could not speak German.

He felt like a deaf-mute running a gauntlet, careening off walls of people. He was helpless, so goddamned helpless! The killings in Bonn, Brussels and Wesel had made every American male over thirty and under fifty suspect. The melodramatic suspicions were compounded by speculations that the obsessed man was being aided, perhaps manipulated, by terrorist organizations—Baader-Meinhof, the PLO, Libyan splinter groups, even KGB destabilization teams sent out by the dreaded Voennaya. He was being hunted everywhere, and as of yesterday, the
International Herald Tribune
had printed further reports that the assassin was heading for Paris—which meant that the generals of Aquitaine wanted the concentration to be
on
Paris, not where they knew he was, where their soldiers could run him down, take him, kill him.

To get off the streets he had to move with the flotsam and jetsam and he needed a run-down hotel like the one across the street. He knew he had to get off the streets; there were too many traps outside. So on the first night in Wesel he remembered the student Johann, and looked for ways to re-create similar circumstances. Young people were less prone to be suspicious and more receptive to the promise of financial reward for a friendly service.

It was odd, but that first night in Wesel was both the most difficult and the easiest. Difficult because he had no idea where to look, easy because it happened so rapidly, so logically.

First he stopped at a drugstore, buying gauze, adhesive tape, antiseptic and an inexpensive cap with a visor. Then he went to a café, to the men’s room, where he washed his face and the wound, which he bound tight, skin joining skin, the bandage firmly in place. Suddenly, as he finished his ministrations, he heard the familiar words and emphatic melody, young raucous voices in song: “
On, Wisconsin.… On, Wisconsin … on to victoreee …
”

The singers were a group of students from the German Society at the University of Wisconsin, as he later found out, who were bicycling through the northern Rhineland. Casually approaching a young man getting more beers from the bar and introducing himself as a fellow American, he told an
outrageous story of having been taken by a whore and rolled by her pimp, who stole his passport but never thought of a money belt. He was a respected businessman who had to sleep it off, gather his wits, and reach his firm back in New York. However, he spoke no German; would the student consider the payment of $100 for helping him out?

He would and did. Down the block was a dingy hotel where no questions were asked; the young man paid for a room and brought Converse, who was waiting outside, his receipt and his key.

All yesterday he had walked, following the roads in sight of the railroad tracks until he reached a town named Halden. It was smaller than Wesel, but there was a run-down, industrial section east of the railroad yards. The only “hotel” he could find, however, was a large, shoddy house at the end of a row of shoddy houses with signs saying
ZIMMER
, 20
MARK
in two first-floor windows and a larger one over the front door. It was a boardinghouse, and several doors beyond in the spill of the streetlamps a heated argument was taking place between an older woman and a young man. Above, a few neighbors sat in their windows, arms on the sills, obviously listening. Joel also listened to the sporadic words shouted in heavily accented English.

“… ‘I hate it here!’
Das habe ich ihm gesagt
. ‘I do not care to stay,
Onkel
! I vill go back to Germany! Maybe join Baader-Meinhof!’
Das habe ich ihm gesagt
.”

“
Narr!
” screamed the woman, turning and going up the steps. “
Schweinehund!
” she roared, as she opened the door, went inside and slammed it shut behind her.

The young man had looked up at his audience in the windows and shrugged. A few clapped, so he made an exaggerated, elaborate bow. Converse approached; there was no harm in trying, he thought. “You speak very good English,” he said.

“Vye not?” replied the German. “They spend bags of groceries for five years to give me lessons. I must go to her brother in America. I say
Nein
! They say
Ja
! I go. I
hate
it!”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m an American and I like the German people. Where were you?”

“In Yorktown.”

“Virginia?”

“
Nein!
The city of New York.”

“Oh,
that
Yorktown.”

“
Ja
, my uncle has two butcher shops in New York, in what they call Yorktown.
Shit
, as you say in America!”

“I’m sorry. Why?”

“The
Schwarzen
and the
Juden
! If you speak like me, the black people steal from you with knives, and the Jews steal from you with their cash registers.
Heinie
, they call me, and
Nazi
. I told a Jew he cheated me—I vas nice, I vas not impolite—and he told me to get out of his shop or he call the ‘cops’! I vas
shit
, he said!… You vear a good German suit and spend good German money, they don’t say those things. You are a delivery boy trying to learn, they kick the shit out of you! What do
I
know! My father vas only a fourteen-year-old soldier.
Shit!
”